


shake what's left of me

by mapyourstars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:40:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23445625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapyourstars/pseuds/mapyourstars
Summary: It was never supposed to be like this.
Relationships: Teddy Lupin/James Sirius Potter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 19





	shake what's left of me

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first ever drabble challenge attempt! i'm a lurker in the drarry discord, and i've been a long admirer of writers who can do the drabble challenges, but i've never... tried or felt ready to try or... whatever. but i've done it! (it isn't drarry, though, sorry!) anyway, i hope you enjoy. thank you for reading! 
> 
> **prompt:** "remember when..."  
>  **words:** 272 (according to google docs)
> 
> the title comes from "neptune" by sleeping at last.

James has always been softer than people expect or think him capable of being. He’s the first to get misty eyed when gifted something thoughtful, the first to divulge his feelings after a few glasses of wine, the first to give the shirt off his back when someone else needs it.

Beneath the loud laugh, quick wit and charm, he’s generous and emotional.

So when—staring into his parents’ back garden, watching the moonlight play over the late summer flower petals, and starting in on his fourth glass of merlot—he gives in to the urge to reminisce and says, “Remember when—” but Teddy cuts him off with a tight, “Don’t,” James feels it all over again. The rending of the earth beneath the repercussions of their breakup.

The chasm opens up a smorgasbord of rotted memory, once sweet raspberries and lavish chocolate caked in decay. The memory he had wanted to share—picnicking in this very garden with Lily and Al when they’d all been kids—turns sour with rejection.

This is what hurts the most, James thinks as he closes up. Where he would have been the first to reassure Teddy that he wasn’t about to bring up their romantic relationship, he lets it go. Because even a year after breaking up, they haven’t been able to get back to their friendship.

It isn’t what he wants to say or what he’d been thinking of when picturing gran’s knit blanket, the overgrown grass or the picnic basket his dad had packed, but when James is four glasses in, he's more susceptible to vulnerability.

“Remember when we said, no matter what, we’d always be friends?”


End file.
